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Social media often distracts from studying, students say

Written by:

Hannah Jones

Image by:

Alvin Dy

BYU-Hawaii students said social media seems to be decapacitating their ability to study.

Siua Cocker, a freshman from Tonga majoring in information technology, admitted, “I finish my homework in class so I don’t even study, because the time that I’d [normally] use to study I use for Facebooking.” Even though Cocker only uses Facebook for all his social media needs, he said, “I don’t focus on my studies anymore.”

Dana Polmgren, an undeclared freshman from San Francisco, stated, “Social media does not let me study. It is very distracting and time consuming.”

According to Abishek Karadkar at Technician, social media has an effect on student’s time management. Karadkar refers to a Pew Research poll that shows 78 percent of college students spend time on social media. He writes, “Actively and frequently participating in social networking can negatively affect [students’] grades or hamper their journeys to their future careers.”

Skye Mackintosh, a freshman from Utah studying business marketing, is in the process of creating his own productivity app in order to manage time better. He said, “I mainly use Instagram and Snapchat for my social media usage. I would say that there are definitely times when social media is a distraction.

“I would even say that social media is my main distraction from my school work. I have never not completed an assignment because of social media but … it makes my assignments take a lot longer than they should.”

Cocker said, “I grew up in a poor country where we didn’t have internet at home. We had to pay and I didn’t want to waste my money on that. It taught me communication skills.” He notes that other students may have not learned this way and “social media robs their time when they could’ve used their time with real people.”

Mackintosh said, “Social media has both enhanced and lessened our abilities to communicate. I think social media is getting people more and more used to having superficial surface level relationships.”